"Yes," she sobbed. "I've hated you and myself. Why don't you tell me it isn't so? I'll believe it—I don't want to hear the truth. I know you don't love me, Harvey. But just say you don't love her."
"What kind of middle-aged, maudlin moonshine is this, anyway?" said I. "Let's go back to Junior. We've passed the time of life when people can talk sentimentality without being ridiculous."
"That's true of me, Harvey," she said miserably, "but not of you. You don't look a day over forty—you're still a young man, while I—"
She did not need to complete the sentence. I sat on the bed beside her and patted her vaguely. She took my hand and kissed it. And I said—I tried to say it gently, tenderly, sincerely: "People who've been together, as you and I have, see each other always as at first, they say."
She kissed my hand gratefully again. "Forgive me for what I said," she murmured. "You know I didn't think it, really. I've got such a nasty disposition and I felt so down, and—that was the only thing I could find to throw at you."
"Please—please!" I protested. "Forgive isn't a word that I'd have the right to use to any one."
"But I must—"
"Now, I've known for years," I went on, "that you were in love with that other man when I asked you to marry me. I might have taunted you with it, might have told you how I've saved him from going to jail for passing worthless checks."
This delighted her—this jealousy so long and so carefully hidden. Under cover of her delight I escaped from the witness-stand. And the discovery that evening by Doc Woodruff that my son's ensnarer had a husband living put her in high good humor. "If he'd only come home," said she, adding: "Though, now I feel that he's perfectly safe with her."
"Yes—let them alone," I replied. "He has at least one kind of sense—a sense of honor. And I suspect and hope that he has at bottom common sense too. Let him find her out for himself. Then, he'll be done with her, and her kind, for good."